Plot: Eight years after the events of The Dark Knight, the terrorist leader Bane arrives in Gotham City, pushing it and its police force to their limits, forcing its former hero Batman to resurface after taking the fall for Harvey Dent's crimes.

Source:Ty Burr
Article: In case you’d forgotten — and the summer of 2012 has given us much to forget — this is what a superhero movie is supposed to look like.

With “The Dark Knight Rises,” Christopher Nolan brings his Batman trilogy to a close with a majestic, almost completely satisfying crash. Everything feels epic about the film: the characters, the effects, the emotional stakes — even the missteps (and there are more than a few). Because this director puts an individualist’s stamp on all his movies, from “Memento” to “Inception” to the two films preceding this one, “Batman Begins” (2005) and “The Dark Knight” (2008), he’s that very rare creature, a blockbuster auteur. “The Dark Knight Rises” feels personal, and that’s what separates it from dully efficient corporate products like “The Avengers” and cynical retreads like “The Amazing Spider-Man.” Nolan’s a Wagner for the multiplex, fashioning his operatic eccentricities on the grandest possible scale.

How eccentric? “Rises” is a superhero movie whose superhero at times seems like a supporting character. It’s eight years after the events of “The Dark Knight” and Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has become a Howard Hughes-like recluse, hiding in stately Wayne Manor and tending wounds both physical and psychic. Bale brings the crazy-eyed intensity that makes him so alarmingly enjoyable to watch, but he’s effectively upstaged by the film’s villain, a hulking ogre named Bane who has a praying-mantis mouthguard and a voice on loan from Darth Vader. Through a combination of makeup and sheer will, British actor Tom Hardy disappears far beneath the surface of this character while suggesting hideous depths. “You’re pure evil,” someone gasps at Bane, who thunders back, “I’m necessary evil.”

Bane, whose roots intertwine with Batman’s own and who had a particularly formative upbringing in a desert prison known as The Pit, is leading an army of criminals with intentions that take a while to play out. Above gr